Chloe Zhao trains to be a death doula
Chloé Zhao is training to be a death doula to help her overcome her fear of the end of life.
Chloé Zhao is training to be a death doula.
The 43-year-old director is attempting to overcome her fear of the end of life by undertaking a specialist course to learn how to provide physical and emotional support to people with terminal illnesses and their families before and after their deaths.
Discussing her movie Hamnet's approach to grief, Chloe revealed she had "recently trained to be a death doula" in the UK.
She told the New York Times newspaper: "I just finished Level 1 training in the UK. In one of the training sessions, we had to research Indigenous cultures from around the world, how they deal with death and dying both today and in the past.
"You can see that the grief of losing a loved one doesn’t change.
"However, the societal understanding of death and the space it gives to grief and how it’s embedded in the culture and the medicalisation of death have shifted so much. In the modern world, when death is no longer seen as a natural part of life — because now it’s about staying alive as long as we can — there’s almost shame around death."
The Nomadland filmmaker was then asked why she had undertaken the training and explained her fear of death had been so debilitating, she had been unable to "live fully".
She said: "Because I have been terrified of death my whole life. I still am.
"And because I’ve been so afraid I haven’t been able to live fully. I haven’t been able to love with my heart open because I’m so scared of losing love, which is a form of death."
Chloe also suggested she had undergone "a midlife crisis" in her 40s, but she found it to be "the best thing that can happen to you, because you're on your way to a rebirth."
She added: "You can’t run from this feeling. Your body is changing, and you can feel death.
"And because I’m so scared of it, I have no choice but to start to develop a healthier relationship with it, or the second half of life would be too hard. It shouldn’t be this terrifying that I can’t even live."
